How to Get Your Health Back on Track - ENCORE

0:00Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. it's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life it's not about doing it now for some result later it makes you feel better now before the holidays are supposed to be joyful but for many of us they're stressful between travel family busy schedules and late nights our bodies burn through magnesium fast magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body including sleep muscle relaxation mood and stress response. Most of us are deficient without even knowing it. That's why I take Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers.

0:33It has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule, so your body can actually absorb and use it. This holiday season, give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better. Visit bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code hymen to save 15%. If we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I've built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q &As, exclusive content, and direct connection.

1:06For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman+. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial. I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year. Four times a year to really reset my system to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff.

1:37I want to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology to help your gut, help your detox system, help your immune system, help reset your nervous system and it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. So one of the principles, one of the foundational pillars of the 10-day detox program.

2:20And what can you do? Now, basically, anybody can do this. People go, I want to do this with a junior high school once. And the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. You know, maybe they don't want their children doing this. I'm like, what, is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food i mean they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school it's the opposite so anyway yes it's very safe anybody can do this um and uh some people by the way you know need more certain things or other things but but basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system so one of the first uh principle the first pillar is eat real food real whole food understand the food is medicine it's not just energy or calories it's truly medicine it's information it's instructions it's code that literally programs your biology with every bite it regulates your gene expression your hormones your brain chemistry your immune system your microbiome pretty much everything is controlled by food and if you're eating the wrong food you're sending all the wrong messages be the right food you're telling the right messages so really a 10-day detox you're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff you're taking all the foods that cause inflammation that are are toxic to your system that are inflammatory, mess with your gut, and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system.

3:46And it's pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fats, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It's tons of non-starchy veggies, like broccoli, any kind of veggie you think of, it's not basically a potato. It's not. No, sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people. avocado was good shots on my palados olive oil on nuts and seeds lots of good protein grass-fed organic regenerative meats fish chicken sometimes we you know for vegetarians we can our vegans plant-based proteins like tempeh or non-gmo organic soy tofu those are the most dense sources of protein but you do need protein that should detoxify so for the 10 days you're gonna we get rid of all the other junk, right?

4:36Processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, pretty much actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of grains and beans and all bad is a lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut. A lot of people have issues with inflammation. A lot of people have issues with gluten. A lot of people have issues with insulin resistance and prediabetes and obesity, and they can be problematic for these people. So basically get off all the bad stuff. Now it's not calorie counting, you can eat as much as you want. Not like crazy how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that.

5:14No, it's just pick the right foods and we focus on what to eat. You don't have to focus on how much to eat, right? So when you look at your plant, it should basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non-starchy veggies. And I use often will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms, I'll have a you know broccoli, I'll make some maybe a salad. So I have lots of veggies and and I'll have a portion of protein that's essentially the size of my pump. Four to six ounces usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now it's a good amount of protein but you don't need that much if you're having an oil protein.

5:50It should be regeneratively raised, should be pasture raised, chicken, wild-caught fish, low mercury obviously all that and we'll put all the show notes lots of good fats with dinner like avocados that's the seeds olive oil in your veggies you can even use for example ghee which is a kind of a butter but it actually has the inflammatory proteins remove casein and weight so basically has just the the the fat it's called clarified butter very common you can get my book the 10-day detox diet, you can get the 10-day detox diet cookbook, whatever you want, put all the show notes and links together.

6:27The second pillar, aside from what you eat, the food is really important. And then by the needy approaching the morning, you need to make sure you get rid of sugar starch in the morning, super important. And then people start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do, sugar sweetened coffees, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads, bad news. Second pillar are your daily habits. This is a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm. It helps you reset your nervous system. And there's two really important habits as part of the 10-day detox. One is when you eat and also when you sleep.

7:00So let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to, you know, eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend to eat before bed. and we snack late at night, it's kind of bad. So basically when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health, if you eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner at the 6, breakfast at 8, that's a 14 hour fact, okay? If you eat at 6 and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't count, right?

7:43And it's the most simple form of what we call time restricted eating. And it's basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset. And I wrote a lot about this in my book, The Ealing Forever. But basically, there's all a process at night that happens. Autophagy and clean up and repair. You want to eat your body, the ability to do that. The next is food. Now, you can do a breakfast if you're eating, you know, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so. That's important to eat our fast. Plus really important to have protein in the morning, but not carbs and sugar. Also not eating three hours before bed is really important.

8:18So most people eat and snack after dinner, don't do that. Have at least three hours before you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight, your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. Here's the full food list. You can, we're gonna have it in the show notes. You can take it with you in store. It's in the book, the 10 day detox, it's in the 10 day detox cookbook. But essentially, here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is protein. You need the right protein, right? So grass-fed or regeneratively raised meats is great.

8:50You can have past-raised lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass-fed beef, past-raised chicken, turkey, duck, all that's fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs if they're past-raised eggs. meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised feedlot meats, get rid of all that stuff. But about fish and seafood, lots of small fish are good, big fish are bad, right? Big fish like swordfish, tuna, sea bass, halibut, most farm-based fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call the smash fish, small wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, You can have black cod, shrimp, scallop, trout.

9:40All those are fine. Eggs, as I said, pastures, eggs are fine. Not organic. Regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, haylenuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts. All that's great. You can even have cacao nibs. Chocolate, not actually chocolate, but where chocolate comes from. Seeds are great. Chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds. all great. Nut butter is also great. So unsweetened nut butter. So almond, cashew, pecan, macadamia, I love macadamia, walnut. Oh, that's great.

10:17You also eat beans. If you're a vegan and you want to do this, you can use GMO-free or non-GMO tofu or tempeh as your protein. What you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, they're cooked in oils, that are basically candied stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenous fats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have aflatoxin and they often are rancid, and so you want to be careful with that. You want to hear about oils and fats. Well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil for cooking, grass-fed ghee.

11:02If you want to use tallow, lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay as long as they're, they're, um, pasta-raised or regenerated raised for salads. And you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil, flax oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, and convert to olive oil. Um, and you can cook with olive oil, but only like tomato sauces and things like that. things that are not high heat. Sesame oil, tahini is great as well, great fat. Sesame seed, kind of paste, wilded oil, other flavorful oils are not made in the most, but you wanna avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, saffron oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad.

11:43What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you wanna stick with lots of dollar-starchy veggies or orange chokes, organic if you can. I use the Dirty Dozen guide from the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. Tell you which of the clean 15, meaning you can eat things when they're not organic, or the Dirty Dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garland, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi, leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radicchio, radish, rutabagas, all the kind of stuff.

12:19seaweed is great lots of minerals shallots summer squash tomatoes turnips zucchini list goes on we have all in there you can have some uh things like sweet potatoes i like the japanese purple sweet potatoes winter squash carrots pumpkin all that's fine i mean carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that's a problem but basically trying to limit to a like one uh serving which like half a cup a day uh we should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly a A little, you know, some of the little tingling potatoes or the Peruvian potatoes, purple potatoes can be fine. What about dairy?

12:54You can eat pasture raised butter or ghee, but I encourage you to get all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine for people, but I encourage you to just get all other dairy. And if you're having, I encourage you to have, make sure it's grass fed or regenerative raised. And what about bees? Well, you can have green beans. You can have green peas. You can have a non-GMO or organic soy, just tofu or tempeh. You can have snap beans, you can have snow peas, but otherwise definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that, I'm really going to hop off all of that.

13:35Why? Because it just shuts down the insulin response, helps you lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually you can add them back, but basically get rid of all the other, all grains. Meat, barley, rye, rice, emerald, millet, oats, everything. Get rid of it. Fruit. Fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non-hydricemic fruits. So organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, two pounds of blueberries, but you can have a cup, half a cup of day.

14:08You want to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high-glycemic fruit like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherries, grapes is the worst. Even foods that you think may be good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it's peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, for example. But you don't want to eat them while you're on the 10-day detection. You want to really shut down the blood sugar and some response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry. You can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia. you have in the shake we have, but generally tend to avoid all that stuff. Also just get rid of all the other artificial sweeteners, all the sugar, all that stuff.

14:48If you have to ask the answer is no, basically. Right, so then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea, all this caffeine, that's okay. A little green tea is fine, it'll help you get a coffee, sparkly water, mineral water, all this. What issue avoid? Alcohol, coffee, bottled water, some plastics, soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically, that's the program. So if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use those simple habits, your body's gonna totally transform and you're gonna see just how food is impacting your health, which is the thing most people don't have a clue about.

15:27And that's why I love it so much. Now after the program, it's really important if you do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months, you have to be smart about getting off it where you can get into a big trip. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods that are allergic to, and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. Let's say you had migraines before and they're gone. Wow, you're going to get a doozy of a migraine. Or let's say you had gut issues before, you're going to get a real problem. Or let's say you had sinus congestion from eating dairy and then you eat it again.

16:00you might get a size infection. So you really have to be smart. So if you're feeling great and you want to continue and you let's say you have a lot of weight to lose, let's say you're having autoimmune disease, let's say you just want to, you're feeling great, you want to continue, no problem. You continue it, continue to do it. You can do it for another 10 days. You can do it for another 10 months. It's fine. It's totally safe to eat. It is pretty much how I eat most of the time with occasionally grains and beans. Also prioritize sleep and obviously your fasting window and not eating before bed.

16:27And then eventually people can transition slowly to the Pagan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the 10-day detox diet, but it gets you more flexibility in your diet. You could add some gluten-free grains. You can have some grass-fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you want to do it most of the time, but try to, you know, occasionally have a glass of wine or dessert occasionally, all that's fine. Remember, when you're adding things back, you want to do it smartly. And in the 10-day detox book, we'll put it in the show notes, you have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten just do that for three days don't have a pizza which has gluten and dairy you won't know what's affecting if you feel that you want to know so give yourself three days and then pick the next food so start with gluten and dairy then grains other grains whatever you'll see slowly add foods back and you'll see how you feel and that's your best barometer the smartest doctor in the room is your own body and that's what you want to focus on this time of year can be packed with connection and joy, but it can also be hard on our health.

17:27Stress goes up, sleep goes down, and we often feel tired, tense, or overwhelmed. One simple reason why most of us are deficient in magnesium. Magnesium is involved in energy production, calming the nervous system, regulating mood, relaxing tight muscles, supporting digestion, and improving sleep quality. But most magnesium supplements only include one or two forms, which your body can't fully absorb. That's why I take Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers. It includes all seven essential forms of magnesium, so it gets into your cells where it actually works. I take it every night to support deep sleep and help my body manage stress, especially this time of year.

18:02If you want to feel calmer, sleep better, and support your overall health during the holidays, I highly recommend trying it. Just go to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code hymen to get 15 % off your order.

18:19I wrote a book called The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet, which is about sugar addiction. And it takes you through in 10 days how to reset your whole nervous system. And not only will you not crave sugar anymore, but your average person lost about 7 or 8 pounds in a week. At 10 days, their blood sugar dropped 10, 20 points. Their blood pressure dropped 10, 20 points. they reduced all symptoms from all diseases by about 70 percent so if you have migraines digestive issues sleep problems joint pain whatever it was everything dropped 70 percent by getting your system healthy so that's important to remember it's quick you don't have to wait forever to see the results so we had a woman in our in our cleveland clinic program called functioning for life within three days of joining the program this woman was on insulin for 10 years, was severely overweight.

19:11In three days, she was off her insulin by changing her diet. In three months, she reversed her diabetes completely and her heart failure and everything else. Pretty impressive. Next thing you should know about sugar is there's many ways to say sugar. To quote Shakespeare, you know, a rose is but a rose by any other name. The other thing you knows that you know we have many names for sugar uh you know in in um i think in you know the the inuit uh from from the you know the arctic uh say they have a hundred words for snow uh and we have so many ways of saying sugar and often we miss it on the label because it's kind of hidden so you know what food companies will do they'll literally put four or five different kinds of sugar in some product because you're forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label.

20:03So basically, if they put five different kinds of sugar, they can list like a healthier ingredient first, like flour or something, and not actually put sugar as the main ingredient. So it's really, really sneaky what they do. The other thing you should be aware is there's a lot of words that You might see like agave, cane sugar, corn, anything, rice, even brown rice syrup, any kind of evaporated cane juice. What the heck's that? That's called sugar. Even fruit. You might see fruit concentrate or fruit juice. I mean, that's just basically sugar. Anything with O's in the end, like fructose, dextrose, maltose, triolose, sucrose.

20:49These are all sugar. or anything with malt in it, like malt syrup, flow malt, maltodextrin, also sugar. Anything with iso, like isoglucose, isomaltose. Basically, there's a million names for sugar. Syrup, right? Maple syrup, sorghum syrup, corn syrup. Pancake syrup, which is usually per fructose. Molasses. Anything with the word sugar in it. Dates sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confection sugar. It's all sugar. So sugar, sugar, sugar. Now, is high fructose corn syrup a little worse? Yes. but in the end, it's all bad. Next thing you need to know is that artificial sweeteners are also not so great for you.

21:27So here's a classic example of what happens when you try to outsmart Mother Nature. Rather than accepting that we really shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar or we shouldn't be having a lot of artificial sweeteners, and rather than accept the fact that we just should try to eat less and not have so much sugar, we kind of want the hack, right? We want the magic loophole to avoid doing what's really good for us. We tried this with fat, right? We thought, oh, you know, butter is bad and saturated fat is bad. So let's have margarine, margarine. I grew up on Fleischman's margarine. But it turns out that trans fats are not only not good for you, they're very bad for you.

22:08And they've killed hundreds of thousands of people and they cause heart disease, diabetes, and they're really unsafe. And the government finally, after 50 years and a lawsuit, finally caved and said, oh, gee, it's not safe anymore. They called it a grass, generally recognized as safe. They removed the grass label. The problem is it's still in the marketplace because they're FDAs and cahoots with the food industry. And essentially, they gave them a lot of loopholes and ways to kind of leave it in there. So I go to the store regularly and I kind of hunt for products. Now, a lot of companies have taken it out, but what they're replacing it with may not be any better, right?

22:48So I think we have to be very careful, like palm shortening, which can be from palm trees, but they're often kind of harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and destroy habitats of orangutans. I mean, it's really bad. So also, there are also five things that have received FDA approval. There are sweeteners, saccharin, sweet and low, asulfatame, which is sun and or sweet one, and aspartame, nutrasweet, equal, and others. Sucralose, which is Splenda and neotame. So these are all things you should avoid. They're really bad for you and don't have them. People who drink diet drinks every day in a study about heart disease had a greater risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

23:36They are carcinogenic in animal studies. They destroy your gut microbiome. I mean, they're really bad for the good bugs in your gut, and they cause more glucose intolerance, diabetes. Certain compounds are excitotoxins, like damaged neurons, like the aspartame in the brain, have neurologic issues. So not so good. And you go, well, what about sugar alcohols? Are those not bad because you don't absorb them? Well, sugar alcohols sound great, but they're kind of these weird, strange names. they're derived from plants fruit and vegetables sometimes and they're in everything candy to bubble gum to cough drops to chewable vitamins to smoothies to even quote of health foods often have these now the they they're kind of less sweet than traditional artificial sweeteners they do have calories but we don't absorb them because they're too big so anything with the word all on it like mannitol maltitol sorbitol xylitol erythritol these are things you don't want to eat when you do they tend to cause a lot of gut issues they cause the the the bugs in your gut they love these they just munch them down and they'll create bloating I mean I remember once when these first came out like 25 years ago or something this patient of mine gave me this chocolate bar look Dr.

24:51Hyman here's a chocolate bar and there's no sugar and and it's amazing and it tastes good and I'm like great and I'm like okay I'm gonna eat it so I was tired that day, I think, and I just scarfed the whole thing down in the afternoon. I was hungry, you know, seeing patients, and my stomach blew up like a balloon. Like, I literally, my gut bacteria did not like it. So, I would not really consume these at all. They can cause diarrhea, bloating, gas, all kinds of digestive issues. They mess with your gut flora. So, there's some that are a little bit better, like erythritol, but still, be very, very careful with these.

25:25Don't think you have a free pass. And it can ferment, it can cause all kinds of issues. So don't take it, especially if you have gut issues. Now, some natural sweeteners are a little bit better than others. So I'm not, I mean, listen, we all like sweet stuff, but kind of my view is if you're going to have something sweet, just have it. You know, you have like, you know, like a large, like a sort of sugary kind of coffee drink in the morning, you know, that can have more sugar than a soda. That I can have like eight or nine teaspoons of sugar or more in that. Now, you wouldn't put eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, right?

26:03So if you take like a teaspoon of sugar and you put it in your coffee, that's probably a lot better than trying to do all these other things and being really aware. So I would say, you know, not more than five teaspoons a day, but that can be even too much for some of us. Most adults consume 22 teaspoons a day. Kids, about 34 teaspoons. Moons, artificial sweeteners, as we said, not good. Sugar alcohol is not good. So Dr. Hyman, like you're killing me. What am I going to do? I mean, well, first of all, if you stay healthy, if you're metabolically tuned up, if you're metabolic engine and your muscles and your mitochondria and your weight and you don't have a lot of organ and belly fat and you want to have a little sugar and you exercise regularly, Okay, it's not going to kill you, right?

26:55But if you are not metabolically tuned up, which by the way is 93.2 % of Americans are not in good metabolic health, which is frightening to me. And how you tell is check your insulin. If your insulin is less than five, you're probably okay. If it's less than two, you're good. But if your insulin is high, you're kind of in trouble and you're not going to have a lot of tolerance. And what I call metabolic degrees of freedom. We get more metabolic degrees of freedom by being healthier. We have more resilience, metabolic resilience. Most of us are metabolically just a train wreck. So be careful. But let's say you want to have a little something.